Over the past couple of years, Canada’s business media has focused on two perceived storm clouds in particular: the possibility of a U.S.-style housing bust, and the dangers of record-high consumer debt levels.

Photograph by: Rick MacWilliam
, Edmonton Journal

EDMONTON - It hardly qualifies as breaking news, but that doesn’t make it any less true — the media thrives on conflict, death, fear and destruction.

That’s our bread and butter, and there’s no mystery why. Put a story about a plane crash next to one about a trade deal, and I’ll tell you which one draws more eyeballs, 99 times out of 100.

It goes back to our caveman days, I guess. Sure, we’ve got flat-screen TVs and all those 21st century toys. But psychologically, humans are primitive. We’re still programmed to scan the horizon for predators and other threats.

The same kind of thinking dominates the business media. From Enron and Nortel to Fukushima and Bitcoin, scandal, corruption and bad news trumps good news every single time.

Which is why Lululemon’s recent screw-ups and every pipeline leak or oil spill in recent memory attracted big play, while yet another quarter of blowout bank earnings prompts little more than a shrug.

Over the past couple of years, Canada’s business media has focused on two perceived storm clouds in particular: the possibility of a U.S.-style housing bust, and the dangers of record-high consumer debt levels.

I’ve always felt both threats were vastly overblown. With the exception of inflated markets like Toronto and Vancouver, house prices in most Canadian cities don’t look excessive.

As long as interest rates remain fairly low, job creation stays healthy and some 250,000 new immigrants arrive in Canada every year, I see no reason why house prices should collapse.

But that won’t stop the parade of (largely foreign) economists, housing analysts and hedge fund managers from wagging their fingers in our general direction.

As for consumer debt levels, yep, they remain high by historic standards. That’s true, as the latest quarterly report from TransUnion shows.

The average Canadian consumer’s total debt (excluding mortgage) totalled $27,368 in the fourth quarter of 2013, the credit information agency says, down just a hair from the record level of $27,485 a year earlier.

Here in Edmonton, the latest figure is just under $31,500, it reports, down 4.6 per cent from a year ago. At the other end of the spectrum, Vancouver, which has the highest consumer debt levels in the country at more than $41,000 per person, saw a gain of 7.1 per cent.

So what does that mean? Are consumers poised on the precipice of financial catastrophe? Far from it. Sure, debt levels are high, but most Canadians are actually wealthier than they’ve ever been, as a new Statistics Canada study shows.

That may not support Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s dubious assertions that Canada’s middle class is in dire straits, but it is illuminating.

StatsCan’s latest survey of financial security, released this week, shows that the median net worth of Canadian family units — in other words, households — reached nearly $244,000 in 2010. That’s up 44.5 per cent since 2005, and it’s almost 80 per cent higher than it was in 1999, when the median figure was just $137,000, adjusted for inflation.

British Columbia, with the highest consumer debt in the country, also boasts the highest median net worth, at $344,000. And no wonder, given the number of $1 million-plus homes in cities like Vancouver and Victoria. Median net worth in B.C. more than doubled between 1999 and 2012, StatsCan notes.

Saskatchewan ranked second behind B.C., with a median net worth of $271,000, while Alberta came in a close third, at $267,500. Newfoundland ($167,900) and Prince Edward Island ($150,300) lagged, while Ontario sits about nine per cent above the national average, at $265,700.

Nonetheless, with its huge population, Ontario is home to the largest share of Canada’s total net worth, holding $3.1 trillion or nearly 39 per cent of the national pie, which totals $9.4 trillion. B.C. is next, accounting for $1.4 trillion or 17 per cent of the country’s net worth.

Not surprisingly, the biggest component of Canadians’ net worth is the value of their homes, which represents a third of the total. The median value? About $300,000 in 2012, up 83.2 per cent from 1999, and up 46.6 per cent since 2005. Private pension assets (30.1 per cent of the total) made up another big chink.

The bad news? The poorest Canadians — those who made up the bottom quintile of StatsCan’s survey — fell backward, registering a decline in net worth, while all others showed healthy gains, including those on the middle rungs of the ladder.

That may not generate any business headlines, but that too is reality.

Over the past couple of years, Canada’s business media has focused on two perceived storm clouds in particular: the possibility of a U.S.-style housing bust, and the dangers of record-high consumer debt levels.

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